The temperamental weather in Tywyn, and loco spinning in the yard, meant that we started the morning inside the museum.
Andy Sheffield, Charles Benedetto, Allan Black, Pete Thomes and John Olsen began by de-mounting the Neptune Road powered window roller blind for Malcolm Phillips to examine to see if we could discover why it was not working as intended. With Charles Andy and Malcolm peering into its innards a break in the showers allowed Allan and Pete to finally pick up the wagon frame stabilisation job after two weeks being rained off.
John fetched an oil can from the Gunpowder Store and lubricated the toplight window opening mechanisms in the museum to keep them operating smoothly through the summer and prevent further corrosion by the salt laden air. Some progress had been made on the roller blind, it had unwound enough to see the fabric was badly creased in places, by the time we called a halt for coffee; Allan and Pete had emptied one can of wood hardener before a shower drove them indoors at this point in time.
We had our coffee in the cafe with Keith Theobald and Mike Green joining us for caffeine chocolate biscuits and chat.
The strong winds opened a gap in the clouds so that Allan and Pete could return to applying wood hardener to the wagon frame. Inside John moved onto cleaning Dot’s paintwork and the Neptune Road windowsill, which was gathering dust and dead insects in abundance, and finished his morning by cleaning the toplights and main window glass. Allan and Pete emptied the second can in finishing the treatment of the second half of the wagon frame and it was covered over once more to allow the hardener to go off.
The roller blind continued to resist efforts to get it to roll up the blind square, it quickly started to become lopsided due to the creases. Andy, Charles and Malcolm wound the fabric around the bottom weight by hand, smoothing out as many of the creases as possible as they did so; it will be left wound up for a week or two to see if the fabric becomes smoothed out.
Photos by John Olsen